And Group A was going to the “real” grandchildren, the ones who never visited, who never sent birthday cards.
Tap…tap…a dull ringing, metal against wood, broke the silence. It was her father, tapping his gold pen on the table. Her brothers used to say that when Dad started tapping his pen, they were in trouble.
“Let me get this straight.” He spoke more slowly than Colleen had ever heard him. “My children are not inheriting the family property?”
“That is correct about the real and personal property, but not about financial instruments, the stocks, the securities, and the bank accounts. Your children will receive considerably more of those assets than their cousins will. Their inheritance will have equal value.”
“Equal cash value.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” Will said. “Why the distinction? Yes, there are three of them, but this doesn’t fix the per-stir-whatever issue.”
“My children are adopted.” Colleen’s father let his pen drop to the table. “And apparently this disqualifies them to be considered true family.” He looked back at Ben’s father. “What about the jewelry? Is it all going to Kim, who, I’d like to point out, is not here, and none of it to my Colleen, who was at her grandmother’s bedside around the clock?”
“Miss Davenport does inherit the family jewelry. It is to be appraised, and Miss Ridge will receive an equivalent amount from the brokerage accounts.”
Miss Ridge? Why was he calling her that?
How could this be happening? Kim was getting the beautiful sapphire earrings and the pearls that needed to be restrung, the three diamond engagement rings and the garnets…everything that had been in the heavy jewelry box on her grandmother’s mahogany dressing table. Grannor had let her try them on when she had come to Georgia each spring.
Why, Grannor, why? You called me a treasure. You were proud of me. You trusted me. Why?
The fox-head brooch was ugly; the topaz choker was heavy and designed for a woman much taller than Colleen; the cloisonné bangles were too big for her wrist. And wasn’t she perfectly happy with her fake pearls and her department-store earrings? Of course, she wanted a diamond someday, but she didn’t need it to be big or expensive, not as long as it came from a man who loved her.
Didn’t you love me, Grannor?
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…that was the chant when girls plucked the petals off a daisy. Had her grandmother been thinking like that when she had made up those lists? The real grandchildren, the real grandchildren, the not-real grandchildren, the real grandchildren…
“After all this compensation,” Norton demanded, “is there going to be anything left? Or are my boys and Kim going to be stuck with a house that they can’t maintain?”
“We can’t know that until the executor arranges for the appraisals,” Mr. Healy replied.
“I assume that I am the executor.”
“Actually, she named Dr. Ridge.”
“Ned? She named Ned? Why would she have done that? I was executor of Father’s will.”
Mr. Healy didn’t answer.
“I’m the executor?” Colleen’s father sounded disgusted. “She does this to my children and then expects me to serve as executor? She is crazy if she expects me to execute a will that disinherits my three.”
“It seems to me,” Laura said, “your children are going to come out of here just fine. They are going to waltz out of here with straight cash, especially Colleen. The jewelry has to be worth a fortune.”
“Is that all that this means to you? The cash? This is our family history. Or it used to be mine. I’m done.” Colleen’s father pushed back from the table so fiercely that the legs of his chair must have clawed a mark in the wood floor. Before anyone could say anything, he was out of the room.
Colleen, closer to the door and quicker out of her chair, caught up with him under the curve of the staircase. “Dad, please, don’t be upset. There’s nothing we can do. She didn’t leave us out altogether. She didn’t do that.”
He paid no attention. “All those years I came down here to help people because the name Ridge used to mean something. Yes, my ancestors were snobs and racist. They owned slaves, for God’s sake, but they helped the community. They fed people during the Depression; they never bought their supplies in Atlanta; they kept their business in town. I grew up, believing that I had something to uphold. So I came back. Chicago has plenty of people who could use free dental care, and believe me, that would have been a hell of lot easier for me, but no, I came here because we were Ridges…and now I find out that my children, my own children, are not real Ridges. Maybe you should be proud of that, Colleen, because whatever blood you have in your veins has to be better than what’s in mine.”
“Oh, Dad…”
“I am going upstairs and getting whatever is mine from my room, and then I am never setting foot in this house again.”
“Ned.”
It was Genevieve, standing behind Colleen’s shoulder.
“Ned, you’ve always known what your mother was like.”
“But this…” His voice trailed off.
“…is awful,” she agreed. “It is contemptible, but not unbelievable. Even Mary Pat said that your mother didn’t know how to love.”
“This is such a slap in the face.”
“Of course it is, and you’re entitled to be angry, but you’ve been entitled to that for years. That she didn’t disinherit them altogether was probably a big concession for her. She may have thought that she was being very open-minded to treat your three as equally as she did. Let’s go get the things you want and see if we can get an earlier flight home.”
Colleen watched as the two of them climbed the stairs. At first her father was moving heavily as if he were fighting a downward-rushing river. Genevieve had her hand on his back. As they turned the landing, he put his arm around her shoulders.
Colleen had been pleading with him. Please don’t be mad, Daddy. It scares me when you’re angry.
She was a daughter. Genevieve was a wife. Yes, you’re angry, but you’ve been mad at her before. Accept it.
Her father had needed a wife.
“Ah…Colleen?”
She turned. Her cousins Will and Jeff were standing awkwardly a few steps from the door to the dining room. Her brothers and their wives had to step around them. Patty looked as if she didn’t feel well; Sean had his arm around her protectively. Finn paused, silently asking Colleen if she needed him. She shook her head. They went out to the front porch—Patty clearly needed to get some air—while Colleen waited with her cousins.
“We aren’t sure what to say,” Will said.
“It’s not your doing.” She hardly knew what she was saying. “You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“This is strange for us, the whole Ridge family legacy thing. We always called Frank ‘Dad.’ He wanted to adopt us, but Norton wouldn’t sign off on it. I suppose this is why.”
Norton was their blood link to the family, and yet they called him by first name. He might be their father, but he wasn’t their dad.
I thought I was family. Surely by every standard except for one I am more family than either of you.
But apparently that one standard was what mattered to Grannor.
“Norton is all full of doom and gloom at the moment, wondering how we are going to be able to afford to even insure everything, but it is our heritage, our family history, and Grannor trusted us with it.”
“I suppose you’ll have to deal with Kim on that.”
“The lawyer said something about some silver buried in an orchard?” Jeff asked. “Do you know what that was about?”
Of course she knew. I know the family stories. You don’t. “General Sherman came here on his way to Atlanta. His army looted the house and burned the orchard, but our somethi
ng-great-grandmother Ravenel had buried the valuables. She did it herself because the family slaves all had the sense to run off. It was the first time she had ever done any manual labor, but she picked up a shovel and did it.”
Grannor had told that story with such pride. The Ravenels had gotten back on their feet during the Reconstruction by selling a lot of what this once-pampered lady had buried.
Why had Grannor thought that Will, Jeff, and Kim were fit custodians of the family legacy? They knew nothing about the Ridges and the Burchells, the Ravenels, Sinclairs, Haywoods, and Singletons. Colleen would have gone without lunch for two months if that’s what it took to get the pearls restrung. She could imagine what would happen when Kim got them. She would never get around to having the work done. Then one day the pearls would go with the outfit she was wearing, so she would put them on, and they would break. She would be in a club or a taxi, and they wouldn’t all be found. She would dump the rest in an envelope, and God only knew what would happen to them then.
Is that what you wanted, Grannor?
Her cousins went back in the dining room. She went outside.
The sun was higher in the sky, and the porch was less bright than it had been. Patty and Liz were on the porch swing by the rose trellis; they started to move to make room for her. She stopped them. She didn’t want to sit.
“How’s your father?” Liz asked.
“Genevieve knew what to say.”
“We’ve been talking,” Sean said, “and we know you’re hurt and Dad’s furious, but Colleen, we’re fine with this—”
We? We? His word rang through her head. Why aren’t I a part of this ‘we’? While she had been inside talking to the cousins, they had put their heads together and decided that they were “fine.”
“—I’ve never felt much connection with this house, and God knows Patty and Liz don’t want to spend their lives polishing silver. We know you care, but I think I can safely speak for Finn—we’re going to be quite happy with stocks, securities, and other investments, thank you.”
“And,” Finn went on, “we are damn lucky. If we aren’t ‘real’ grandchildren, she could have disinherited us altogether.”
“But doesn’t this…surprise you?” Hurt you, injure, wound you? That’s what she meant.
“It’s hard to figure anyone thinking Kim deserves more than you, but it is what it is, Colleen. Grannor was who she was.”
“I suppose.”
She crossed the porch to where Ben was leaning against the railing. As she approached, he pushed himself away to stand properly.
That’s what you did in the South. A gentleman didn’t lounge in front of a lady.
But you’re a snowboarder, an ex-snowboarder, a cheating, faithless ex-snowboarder.
What was wrong with her? How could she say he had “cheated” on her with Leilah?
She kept her back to the others and spoke softly. “How much of this had you figured out?”
“It did occur to me that the reason you couldn’t do the inventories was not because you were inheriting, but because you weren’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you warn us?” A real friend would have.
He frowned. “I couldn’t. It wasn’t my place. Plus it was all speculation. Everything I knew, you knew. And I was wrong about a lot. My guess was that everything from the family was going to Will. It never occurred to me that you all being adopted made such a difference to her.”
“It never occurred to me either. So some warning would have been nice.” If you weren’t a faithless cheat.
“I couldn’t. You must see that.”
Well, she didn’t. “If you were on a mountain and you saw a crevasse or something dangerous, would you turn around and warn the others?”
“That’s different.”
“Why?” It was a struggle to keep her voice low. “Because that’s physical and this is emotional? Because that was a competition and this is jewelry?”
“That’s not fair, Colleen.”
“Unlike Grannor’s will? What’s fair about the foundlings not getting the heirlooms? Does the money make it fair?”
She was so sick of this. Her father got to be angry; her cousins got to feel awkward, her brothers relieved. What about her? Why couldn’t she stand up and say how she felt?
Because she was a nice girl, and nice girls weren’t Drama Queens. Nice girls didn’t tell their summer tenants to find another place to live. Nice girls didn’t leave their grandmothers alone in the hospital. Nice girls let Holy Communion be an etiquette problem.
As a teacher she could be firm; she could exert her authority. She didn’t need her students to like her—although they did—she needed them to learn. But in the rest of her life, she was nice.
And where had all that niceness gotten her? Alone. Disinherited and alone. Her father had Genevieve. Her brothers had each other and their wives.
Ben. She ought to have Ben. That must have been why his father and brother had wanted him to come, so he could be here for her. Little did they know. Ben’s specialty was leaving her, wasn’t it? She couldn’t trust him. Why hadn’t she learned that four years ago?
Apparently nice girls were also big idiots.
All her thoughts about his watch and their mothers being friends meaning something…they didn’t, of course they didn’t. They didn’t mean a thing. Wanting them to was nonsense, sentimental nonsense.
She wanted to leave, but she was going to have to wait for her uncle. She would have to sit in the back seat of his car and listen to her aunt complain.
Never again. She was never going to allow herself to be the afterthought, the one always in the middle seat. Oh, Colleen’s legs are short; she doesn’t mind being in the middle. Everyone would fuss if she started renting her own car. Oh, Colleen, we’ll take you…there’s plenty of room….
Well, too bad. They could fuss all they wanted. She would rent a car. She was an adult. Let them sit in the back seat of her car.
The door opened, and Ryan Healy came out. Reluctantly Colleen turned around to face the others. She suddenly felt exhausted. She didn’t want to be an adult. She wanted to be a little girl. She wanted to sit on her mother’s lap and have her mother kiss the hurt away.
Sean spoke to Ryan. “I know that this isn’t our problem, but are Will, Jeff, and Kim going to keep this place going without a ton of capital?”
Ryan shrugged. “We aren’t going to know that until all the appraisals come in, but it certainly is a concern. This heritage mattered to your grandmother, but ultimately it may not have mattered enough. The best way to preserve it would have been to leave everything to Will.”
“No,” said Finn. “The best way to have preserved it would have been to leave everything to Colleen.”
Chapter 9
He and Colleen were the only ones going back to Virginia. Ben had to ask his brothers if one of them could take them to the airport, but his parents insisted on doing it.
His father had an agenda.
“Colleen,” his father said once they were out of town, “you should get your father to agree to serve as executor.”
Colleen was sitting in the back seat with his mother. “He doesn’t want to.”
“I know, but it is in your interest. I can say this because it is in the estate’s interest too. There are two ways to appraise the house. The usual thing would be to call a local appraiser who will value it as a piece of real estate, and viewed that way, it is a white elephant. There is almost no market for such a house around here. But if you get in a high-end architectural salvage firm to appraise the fence, the chandeliers, the paneling, all of those, separately, that would make a big difference. There’s a very active market in Atlanta and other cities for such things, especially when the history can be so well-documented.”
“That sounds like a lot more work,” she said.
And a lot more money for her and her brothers. “Maybe Dr. Ridge’s wife is the person to talk to about this,” Ben suggested.
His father nodded. As deeply fond as his parents had been of Colleen’s mother, they had had a very good impression of Dr. Ridge’s second wife, too.
“As long as we are overloading you with advice”—his mother had an agenda too—“there is another thing. Ben told us that your grandmother’s housekeeper quit.”
Needless to say, Ben had only mentioned Leilah to his parents in the context of being Mrs. Ridge’s housekeeper.
“With the house having so many valuables,” his mother continued, “we don’t think you should be living there alone. We hope you’ll agree to let Ben stay until things get sorted out.”
“But—”
He interrupted her. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.” His parents had already talked to him about this.
He hadn’t liked the idea. “Mom, I’m really not the right person for this. What about Tommy?” His younger brother was a cop. “He’s licensed to carry. He goes to target practice. He’s going to be a lot more useful than me.”
“We’re actually more concerned about someone being there to support her emotionally. She has had quite a blow.”
Support her emotionally? How could his parents possibly think that he would be any good at that?
Colleen was listening politely and then, when his mother finished, murmured something noncommittal, not promising one way or the other. Instead she asked if the lake house was a part of the residual estate. His dad confirmed that it was and that she and her brothers would indeed own half of it once the estate had been settled.
“But it could be sold to raise the money to pay my brothers and me?”
“That’s another matter for the executor, but if you have other questions, try me and see if I can answer them.”
Colleen was quiet for a moment, then said, “I have a question about my adoption. You know how my mother’s mother found my brothers’ birth family? I was wondering who found me. Did you all?”
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